Transcript Speech Production - Delving into the Mental Life of Language

Speech Production
The main problems of Speech
Production:
1) Lexical selection/morpheme retrieval: How do
we choose words and morphemes?
2) Grammatical Encoding: How do we organize it
all into a grammatical sentence?
3) Phonological encoding: How do we coordinate
our muscles to make the appropriate sounds?
(and…How do we do this so quickly?)
Merrill F. Garrett:
archaeologist of speech errors
• Proposed that speech errors could help us form
working hypotheses about speech production
• Two most common errors:
– word-exchange errors
• I’m sending a brother to my e-mail
– phoneme-exchange errors
• teep a kape
Slips of the Tongue
“slips of the tongue can be seen as products of
the productivity of language. A slip is an
unintended novelty. Word errors create
syntactic novelties; morphemic errors create
novel words; and sound errors create novel
but phonologically legal combinations of
sounds” (Dell, 1986, p. 286)
A few example errors
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Taby take me out back
The blicks were blue
Joining our vases with angels
I’m afraid of falling asheep in the
slaugher
• Nixed meighbors
• The streaky gwease gets the
wheel
Caption: “Good morning, beheaded – oh, I mean beloved”
Was Freud Right?
• Motley (1980)
• Bine foddy  Fine body
– male participants
– more frequent error when experimenter
provocatively clad
– more frequent when participants scored
higher on test of sexual anxiety
Fromkin: 6 levels
1 – Identify Meaning
2 – Select syntactic structure
3 – Generate intonation/stress patterns
4 – Insert content words
5 – Put together affixes & function words
6 – Specify phonetic segments, according to
phonological rules
A more common model
• 3 levels
– conceptualization
– formulation:
• functional level
• positional level
– articulation
• Almost all speech errors occur within 1 level
‘stop beating your brick against a head wall!’
Conceptualization
• Connecting with semantic
memory and the world
• Speaker:
– conceives intention
– selects relevant information
• Product is preverbal message
Formulation:
Functional level
• Builds grammatical “frame”
• Content words (N, V, Adj) retrieved and assigned
grammatical functions
• NOT lined up in order
• No phonological information (just syntax &
semantics)
• Grammatical affixes and function words exist as
features
Formulation:
Positional Level
• Content words:
– inserted into labeled (N,V,Adj) slots in frame
– specified phonologically
• Frames contain function words &
grammatical affixes (still not phonologically
specified)
Articulation
• All sounds are specified
• Muscles are coordinated, and speech is
produced!
Evidence for 2 levels of Formulation?
Speech Errors!
• Word-exchange errors: (Functional Level)
– Words of the same category
– Long/Short-distance (even different sentences)
• I’m sending a brother to my e-mail (N-N, long-distance
exchange)
• Phoneme-exchange errors: (Positional Level)
– Between two content words
– Phonetically similar (usually)
– Short-distance (can be separated by function word)
• teep a kape (V-N, short-distance exchange)
Evidence for 2 levels of Formulation?
Speech Errors!
• Functional Level:
– Semantic substitution errors, same syntactic
category
• on my knee (on my elbow)
• Positional Level:
– Function words – don’t participate in phoneme
exchanges
• lite wine for white line, but NOT luh thine for the line
Working Memory?
• Ferreira & Pasher (2002)
– Concurrent tone discrimination task
• Slows performance during early stages of
word production
• No interference during later stages of word
production
– Selecting a response is cognitively
demanding, but implementing it is not!
Phoneme exchange demonstration
• Read each pair of words silently to
yourself. Once the word RESPOND
appears, say the preceding word pair out
loud, as quickly as you can.
Give Back
Get Book
Go Booth
Give Booth
Bad Goof
RESPOND
Ball Doze
Bash Door
Bean Deck
Bell Dark
Barn Door
Darn Boor
RESPOND
Ripe Long
Real Log
Long Rice
RESPOND
Big Dutch
Bang Dog
Big Deal
Bang Door
Dart Board
RESPOND
Rack Seal
Road Sale
Real Slick
Soul Rock
RESPOND
Give Book
Go Back
Get Boot
Bad Goof
RESPOND
Ball Doze
Bash Door
Bean Deck
Bell Dark
Darn Bore
RESPOND
Ripe Long
Real Log
Long Rice
RESPOND
Big Dutch
Bang Doll
Bill Deal
Bark Dog
Dart Board
RESPOND
Rack Seal
Road Sale
Real Slick
Soul Rock
RESPOND
Lexical Bias Effect
• Phoneme exchange errors create real words
rather than non-words more often than you’d
expect
• Darn Bore  Barn Door (30%)
• Dart Board  Bart Doared (10%)
• Evidence for…
– parallel activation?
– monitoring?
– both?
Errors demonstrating lexical bias
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a leading list (reading list)
a phonological fool (phonological rule)
peach error (speech error)
fool the pill (fill the pool)
sea weeded the garden (Sue weeded…)
bop a dromb (drop a bomb)
when you get old your shrine spinks (spine shrinks)
- notice that the lexical bias applies the most strongly to
the first word that’s produced! (e.g. last two examples)
Don’t think of pink elephants!
• We often develop more than one
speech plan. The “other” plan can
interfere
• Lane, Groisman, & Ferreira (2006)
– Don’t ‘leak’ privileged information about
the smaller triangle
– More mistakes when given “conceal info”
instructions than when no instructions
given
Malapropisms
- errors in phonological retrieval
• The 1775 Restoration comedy, The Rivals, by Richard
Sheridan introduced the humorous character, Mrs. Malaprop
(from French mal à propos, “inappropriate”). The selfeducated Mrs. Malaprop was always substituting a similarsounding word for the word that she intended to use.
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"Make no delusions to the past."
"Oh! It gives me the hydrostatics to such a degree!"
“The pineapple (pinnacle) of perfection…”
"I have interceded another letter from the fellow.“
• Shakespeare also used malapropisms as with the character
“Bottom” in A Midsummer Night's Dream: "'Thisby, the
flowers of odious savors sweet.'" (III.i.81) Audiences in
Shakespeare's day would have known that Bottom meant
"odorous savors sweet" as in sweet smelling, instead of
"odious," which means hateful.
Malapropisms in “Peanuts”
cartoons
Planning…
• Almost all exchange errors occur with units that are
phrases or smaller
– the Grand Canyon went to my sister
– the red color was attracted by a hummingbird of the feeder
• about 80% of our exchange errors occur within the
same clause
– (85% - Garrett, 1975; 78% - Fromkin, 1989)
• If we correct ourselves, we tend to do it at the edge of
a constituent:
– The doctor looked up Joe’s nose – that is, up Joe’s left
nostril.
– NOT … “that is, left nostril”
• So planning units seem to be phrases and clauses